India shames Pakistan at UN as it plays politics with kids killed by terrorists

NEW DELHI: India deployed a young diplomat once again to rebut allegations by Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi at the UN General Assembly. On Sunday, Eenam Gambhir took the floor at the UNGA to exercise India’s ‘right of reply’ and slammed Qureshi’s allegations that India was behind the Peshawar school attack in December 2014.


Describing it as a “preposterous allegation”, Gambhir said the “despicable insinuation” dishonoured the memory of the children killed in the assault. “Among the most outrageous was the preposterous allegation relating to the horrific terror attack on a Peshawar school four years ago,” Gambhir said.

She reminded the new Pakistani government under the leadership of PM Imran Khan that there was an outpouring of sorrow and pain in India following the massacre of children in 2014. She said both Houses of Parliament had expressed solidarity while paying respect to those killed.

“Schools all over India had observed two minutes of silence in their memory. The despicable insinuation made by the foreign minister of Pakistan dishonours the memory of the innocent lives lost to terrorists that day,” Gambhir said.

She said the allegation was a “desperate attempt” to look away from the monster of terror Pakistan had created in its quest to destabilise its neighbours and covet their territory.

Qureshi had said the terrorists who attacked the army school in Peshawar had “links” with India. Gambhir also took a dig at Qureshi’s emphasis on a “new Pakistan” under Khan, saying while the Indian delegation had come to listen to Pakistan’s “new” foreign minister outline the vision of a new Pakistan, “what we heard is a ‘new Pakistan’ cast in the mould of old.” Pakistan, she said, “hosted” 132 UN designated terrorists and 22 terror groups listed under UN Security Council’s 1267 sanctions. “Will Pakistan deny that the UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed enjoys a free run inside Pakistan and spews venom and sets up candidates for electoral offices,” she said.

The exchange comes on the heels of the annual trading of barbs and sharp words between India and Pakistan at the UNGA. The almost ritual exchange continues to hold interest only among Indians and Pakistanis, leaving the rest of the world cold.

The Peshawar attack was carried out by heavily-armed Taliban suicide bombers who stormed the army-run school and took several hostages. The attackers wearing paramilitary Frontier Corps uniforms had entered the school and started indiscriminate firing.

With Qureshi again raking up the Kashmir issue, Gambhir asserted that India was making it clear to the “new government” of Pakistan that the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir was and would remain an integral part of India. On Saturday, Qureshi said Kashmir would never belong to India.

India also ripped through efforts of the ‘new Pakistan’ to champion human rights. “This is vintage verbal duplicity,” Gambhir said, citing the example of Princeton economic professor

Atif Mian

who was removed because he belongs to the Ahmadi sect, regarded as apostates in Pakistan. “Before preaching to the world, championing of human rights should begin at home,” Gambhir said.

She said a report on Kashmir by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which Qureshi welcomed in his speech, was a publication that no UN member-state had asked for or supported and on which no action was taken. She refuted his allegation that India had called off the foreign minister talks on “flimsy grounds”. “The new foreign minister of Pakistan chose to term the gruesome killing of our security personnel by Pakistani-sponsored terrorists as ‘flimsy grounds’,” she said.